Dance

De Young Artist Fellow Lenora Lee’s talents are unquestionable, but
perhaps the key to her success is the incredible community that she’s built around herself. Her upcoming performance includes a
long list of artistic collaborators: musicians, dancers, martial artists, a multimedia designer, a poet, filmmakers, and a
lighting designer. Lee’s diverse collaborations create a variety of access points for audiences, and for Lee, those points of
connection are of the most important part of each performance. Together Lee and her collaborators have created two new
performances,
The Escape and
Rescued Memories: New York Stories, which will be performed at the de Young this November.

Lenora Lee is a dancer, a choreographer, and a current de Young Artist Fellow. As the artistic director of Lenora Lee Dance, she has created interdisciplinary performances that integrate dance, martial arts, video projection, music, and text. During her yearlong fellowship, Lee will complete two new performances, The Escape and Rescued Memories: New York Stories, both of which are inspired by stories of Chinese women who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century.

Artists-in-Residence Brad Rosenstein and Jean Lamprell conclude their month-long residence this weekend at the de Young. Rosenstein, an independent curator, has transformed the Artist Studio into a floating gallery of gossamer tutus created by renowned costumier Jean Lamprell. In this blog post, museum educator Gregory Stock interviews this dynamic duo.

Tonight, Friday Nights at the de Young features work in progress by Artist Fellow Monique Jenkinson (aka Fauxnique). As part of the creation of her original work, Instrument, Jenkinson is working with three different choreographers in an experimental process designed to enact, expose, and undermine the roles of the dancer as workhorse and the choreographer as auteur. The presentation tonight will be a rare opportunity to witness the development of Instrument, inspired in part by Rudolf Nureyev: A Life in Dance (on display at the de Young through February 17, 2013). The first in a series of three, today’s post focuses on the collaboration between Jenkinson and choreographer Miguel Gutierrez.

At the age of 14, former ballerina Stephanie Herman ditched school and waited in line for six hours at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House to see Rudolf Nureyev dance with Margot Fonteyn. Little did she know that a decade later, she would be dancing with the famed ballerino, whose career and costumes are the subject of the special exhibition Rudolf Nureyev: A Life in Dance, which opens tomorrow, October 6.

For the past year, Artist Fellow Sarah Wilson and her artistic partner Catch Me Bird have been creating Off the Walls, a multimedia performance based on the de Young Museum’s iconic painting Aspiration (1936) by Aaron Douglas. On September 20, the world premiere of Off the Walls will take flight in the Koret Auditorium at the de Young. Today we highlight Z Space, one of the project’s collaborating partners, whose technical residencies offer artists and performers the time and resources to experiment with various staging elements and production designs integral to the creative process.

One of the most innovative components of the Artist Fellows program is the goal to reveal the process of artistic creation—the weeks (even years) of planning, the evolving ideas, and the constant back-and-forth that foments creativity. Throughout the month of July, Artist Fellow Sarah Wilson and her artistic partners, Catch Me Bird (C. Derrick Jones and Nehara Kalev), have been exhibiting this collaborative process as they work together to produce Off the Walls. A multimedia performance that melds Wilson’s dynamic jazz-oriented music with Catch Me Bird’s dance and aerial performances, Off the Walls is inspired by the painter Aaron Douglas, whose painting Aspiration is a highlight of the de Young’s American painting collection.

The blog series Museum Without Walls
features de Young Artist Fellows working outside of the museum with other artists and local, community based arts
organizations. In this edition, we catch up with Sarah Wilson and Catch Me Bird at their Djerassi alumni artist residency where
they gave us a glimpse into the early stages of their creative process.

Visitors to Balenciaga and Spain (on view at the de Young through July 4) will immediately notice something different about this installation: music! Melodic notes of Spanish guitar waft through the galleries and draw the viewer further into the exhibition, culminating in the section of the show devoted entirely to the influence of dance. The drama of Spanish dance traditions inspired Balenciaga and can be seen throughout his designs; we hope that the music included in the exhibition does the same for you!

The section detailing the influence of dance in Balenciaga and Spain at the de Young.

FAMSF Blog

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Blog provides the latest news and views on exhibitions, programs, collections, and behind-the-scenes happenings at San Francisco's de Young and Legion of Honor museums.